Night Falls on Manhattan

NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN

About The Production
"Night Falls on Manhattan" is Sidney Lumet's 40th film and his 29th to shoot entirely on location in New York City. As writer/director, he uses a variety of the city's neighborhoods as his sets, including Harlem, Gramercy Park, Foley Square, Battery Park and the Upper East Side.

Before filming began on "Night Falls on Manhattan," Lumet gathered his cast for rehearsal at New York City's Ukranian National Home. A consummate actor's director, Lumet feels that two weeks of rehearsals are an important part of the filmmaking process. "Actors have a certain confidence with me. They have a feeling that they can go anywhere and try anything and that somebody sympathetic is watching, somebody who understands what they're doing," explains Lumet.

"We had a lot of magic in those rehearsals, like a good jazz jam session because people were playing their instruments at the top of their form and we challenged each other," remembers Ron Leibman. Lumet's actors are grateful for this rare opportunity to prepare their performances in advance of the shooting schedule. Richard Dreyfuss recalls: "We began by reading the script two or three times. Then we read through it again but we ripped it apart asking whatever questions each of us might have. Then we got up on our feet and mounted each scene, and we did that for about a week and half. It allowed us to become familiar with the scenes themselves, the other actors and the arc of the characters."

For Leibman, a veteran theater actor, the rehearsal process seemed only natural. "My background originally and forever will be the theater, so I'm used to the rehearsal process. Sidney is so bright to do that. Sidney comes from the theater. He knows the value of it. He begins to cut the movie in his head as we begin to block the scenes. You rehearse in sequence, just like a play, so I got a sense of where the character goes - the line of the character and the art of the character. Usually you don't have that because you shoot a film out of sequence," notes Leibman.

For Andy Garcia, the idea of rehearsing the entire script was unusual, but the actor found it extremely helpful. "We rehearsed a lot of the material and that way you don't have to discover it so much on the day of the shooting. It's already been talked about," he explains. "There are a lot of laughs in rehearsal and on the set because of the control. The intensity allows you to create a loose atmosphere because you save the intensity for the take," explains Lumet.

After two full weeks of rehearsal, the cast and crew moved on to other locations around Manhattan. As with all of Lumet's films, they shot on location in every area of the city. "The real issue about shooting in New York is, can you come up with something on film that somehow gets at the gritty heart, the pump, the engine of the city. Sidney's fortunately better equipped to see that and feel that than most filmmakers," explains producer Thom Mount. "He's very much a New Yorker."

During the two-and-a-half months of filming, the crew of "Night Falls on Manhattan" found themselves in Foley Square, Gramercy Park, Madison Avenue, Central Park, Long Island, Harlem, Bellevue Hospital, Worth Street, St. Marks Church, The Brooklyn Piers and The Stages in Queens. The diversity of New York's neighborhoods enables Lumet to point out: "In all of the films I've shot in New York, I've never had to duplicate a location."

By shooting in real locations, Ian Holm feels that the film gets "more of an edge." The actor recalls one example that stands out. "After my character gets shot, we filmed in Bellevue Hospital and immediately behind me there was a real cardiac arrest going on with a little partition just separating the two of us."

As co-producer on the film, John Starke's work is made somewhat easier by Lumet's incredibly efficient and fast paced work style. "The normal things one needs to arrange for while shooting in Manhattan like blocking off streets, shutting down neighborhoods, re-directing traffic and lighting Central Park up at night are made easier by a director who knows exactly what he wants and has planned and rehearsed everything ahead of time," explains Starke. "We shot a great deal of this film on location," he continues, "and no other director grasps the feel of New York the way Sidney Lumet I does which requires everyone's full attention and focus, from the location people to the assistant directors."

Production designer Philip Rosenberg describes "Night Falls on Manhattan" as a film that deals with "the complexity of being totally uncorrupted in a society so used to moral compromise." He found it challenging "to bring visual interest to the world of the municipal criminal justice system, the hallmark of which is basically banality. It was necessary to raise banality to an art form."

Cinematographer David Watkin recalls his initial meeting with Lumet. "Sidney really knows what he's doing and what he wants. He wanted it to look sort of harsh to start with and then mellow." Watkin and Lumet visited all of the locations they would shoot at ahead of time and discussed how they both felt about them and how Lumet wanted it to look.

TOP or BACK

|Home|Theater|Video|